According to THE STATE, the Ol’ Ball Coach turned into the Ol’ Sheriff last week, as South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier alerted campus police to a suspicious man at the parking lot at Williams-Brice Stadium. The man was later arrested after he was spotted peering into car windows. I’m not saying Shaquille O’Neal has any competition from Spurrier for Top Sports Cop, but it’s nice to see a story involving “Spurrier” and “police” that doesn’t involve cafeteria brawls.

It’s nice to see that Spurrier was able to take time out of his busy schedule of coaching his team to another mediocre, disappointing season to help with safety. His other way of keeping the campus safe? Avoiding any big wins that might lead fans to get rowdy while celebrating.

The police report says that the man smelled of alcohol, which leads me to believe that Spurrier’s initial interest was to make sure that QB Stephen Garcia hadn’t been nipping from the bottle again. I’d be willing to bet if the guy was just wandering in the parking lot looking for a safe place to urinate, Spurrier wouldn’t have had a problem.

But suspicious men in parking lots are the least of Spurrier’s problems. With his team sitting at 2-2, including another loss to Vanderbilt, the POST AND COURIER reports that Spurrier has decided to junk the offense and start from scratch, opening up all 11 starting positions for competition this week. In fact, Spurrier has asked the man he had arrested to come back and try out for a spot.

“He did a pretty good job staying away from the cops for a long time, so you know he’s elusive,” Spurrier said. “Heck, we might try him at running back or kick returns.”

(Note: I made that last quote up.)

This entry was posted
on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 7:10 pm and is filed under College Football, Police Blotter .
Visited 2,299 times, 3 so far today